We are happy to announce a new PlaneShift release: 0.5.9!
This release improved many of the main maps with better lighting, new sounds and music, better NPC day/night cycles, normal maps and new textures. Additionally we added many new functionalities to the PlaneShift Engine, which will allow to add new content in the coming weeks and months.

This is the detailed change log:Art:

Updated Laanx temple geometry and textures.

Performance improvements to Hydlaa plaza.

Updated Hydlaa Jayose with new houses and new art.

Updated tutorial area with new houses.

Updated Hydlaa winch with new houses and added normal maps.

Added new magic staff items, three for each magic Way!

Updated the lighting and sky-box of all levels to have a more realistic day/night effect.

Changed the speed of walk and run to be more realistic, and allow better animations.

Added blending of walk/run to smooth the transitions.

Fixed transparency problem on all outdoor maps (terrain).

Added Harnquist's shop interior.

Added grass to all outdoor/terrain maps (experimental).

Engine - Graphics:

Added support for GLSL shader. This should improve compatibility with Intel graphic cards but could give problems with old drivers.

Added the first iteration of a new NPC-GUI to talk with NPC.

Fixed some issues with pictures in help windows and books.

Added a lock/unlock function to the Quickspell bar (you can enable the bar with "/show quickspell")

Fixed texture loading order on character which fixes problems with Klyros/Enkidukai skin color being wrong and armor disappearing.

Engine - Rules:

Overhauled the music rules support to work by limiting the amount of notes instead of making them wrong. Additionally several problems regarding musical instruments have been fixed.

Added information about quality when a new item is created through crafting.

Engine - Artificial Intelligence:

Merged GSOC 2011 work on tribes and expanded from there by adding several functionalities to NPC which should start to show soon.

(For developers) several improvements to functionalities to handle NPC paths in order to allow to easily change them directly from the client.

Added support to magic for NPC.

Added several perceptions and scripting options to NPC in order to allow checking for more conditions and act appropriately.

Added support for /percept in order to trigger NPC perceptions.

Added information about the NPC status in /info

Engine - Infrastructure:

From now on clients will just authenticate with sha256 passwords (if you cannot login you can restore the password from the registration page or input your password from scratch in a 0.5.8.1 client and get in-game, then try logging back in 10 minutes later)

Desura clients now will ship with the updater functionalities disabled, you can still enable them by changing pslaunch.cfg (Update.Enable option), but we suggest to use the Desura update functionalities.

Now the Linux client will run again old older distributions (GLIBC 2.7).

Improvements to the updater which should be more stable after this release.

Added support to restart the NPCClient directly from an Administrator client with /quitnpcclient

Added a button in pslaunch to allow an easier of the shader cache in case of problems.

Fixed a bug which could show the server as being unreachable after logging out (for example after deleting a character)

Engine - General:

Added some command line commands to set character descriptions (/setdesc, /setoocdec, /loaddesc, /loadoocdesc).

Math scripts and paths can now be reloaded from the database at runtime allowing an easier development, and restart-less fixes. (/reload path, /reload mathscript).

Added support for buff-able variables on a character.

Several places are now more script-able: when damage is applied to a character, when a new item is created from crafting, etc. Additionally several ways to change things regarding items and inventory have been added to scripting support.

Fixed a crash when using names of off-line entities as target for administrator commands.

Now GM can see mana in the detail windows of characters.

Fixed dangling alliance/guild data being kept in the db even if they were effectively not existent any more.

Allow multiple crafting patterns to be within one book.

Added support for restrains in the loot item modifiers.

Fixed crash when using label on target function.

It's now possible to show and hide windows with paws scripting using WindowName:Show()/:Hide().

Fixes on the quality options in pslaunch not being set correctly sometimes.

Languages are now sorted by name in pslaunch and don't show duplicates anymore

Fixed error shown when opening books written by others

Fixed take and stack all on action location items

Fixed selection of skins with dots in the filename.

Fixed issues in the spell checker dictionary handling.

Updates from CrystalSpace3D:

Several fixes in shader management including crash fixes.

Added support to recent openal libraries.

Setting:

Updated many NPCs to have all base dialogue triggers (like greetings, how are you, tell me about you, goodbye, ...)

Updated the cooking quest chain in order to allow earlier access to basic cooking books and more logical quest progression.

Various improvements and bug fixes to current quests.

Audio:

New 15 minute ambient music for Hydlaa Plaza, Magic Shop.

New Battle Environment Sounds.

Fixed water sound at Bronze Doors Fortress.

Known Bugs:

Fog and rain can be rendered wrongly on certain platforms (big white areas on screen)